Ibn Malik

Jamal ad-Din Muhammad ibn Abdullah ibn Malik at-Tai (600-672 AH / 1204-1274 CE) was an Andalusian-born Arabic grammarian who authored the most celebrated didactic poem on Arabic grammar in Islamic history. Born in Jaen in al-Andalus, he migrated to the eastern Islamic lands due to the Reconquista, eventually settling in Damascus where he spent the most productive years of his scholarly career.

Ibn Malik's masterpiece is al-Khulasah al-Alfiyyah (commonly known as Alfiyyat Ibn Malik), a poem of approximately one thousand lines that comprehensively covers the rules of Arabic grammar (nahw) and morphology (sarf). Its concise verse format made it ideal for memorization, and it became the most widely memorized and studied grammar text in the Islamic world. The poem has been the subject of dozens of commentaries, the most famous being Ibn Aqil's sharh and the commentary by Ibn Hisham al-Ansari. He also authored at-Tashil li-Fawa'id at-Tamthil, a comprehensive Arabic grammar in prose, and al-Kafiyah ash-Shafiyah, a longer grammatical poem.

Ibn Malik was unique in his willingness to draw evidence from a wider range of Arabic poetry and prose than most grammarians, including later poets that the Basra and Kufa schools would not have accepted as authorities. This broader evidential base sometimes drew criticism from purists but enriched the examples available for grammatical illustration. He died in Damascus in 672 AH (1274 CE). His Alfiyyah has been the backbone of Arabic grammar education for over seven centuries and continues to be memorized by students of Arabic across the Muslim world.